Prepared 4 January 2003
First uploaded 4 January 2003


Ref: LAN 2 I:museum1

Geological Museum at Upwey


Prepared 4 January 2003 by John D. Hughes, assisted by Anita Hughes and Pennie White.


This document is a revision of John D. Hughes Private Museum document, prepared 24 May 2002 by John D. and Anita M. Hughes.

The Dragon King is the patron of the Geological Museum at Upwey.

There are more that 2000 museums in Australia.

The official founding date of the Museum was 21 January 2000. It is located at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria, Australia 3158, the property and home of Anita & John D. Hughes.

As a private museum, the museum is a not-for-profit organisation and is funded by its owner, John D. Hughes of 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria, Australia, 3158.

The Museum has space limitations. Some specimens are toxic so, for occupational Health & Safety reasons, the general public will not be admitted into the Museum section where all the specimens are on display, without supervision and safety gear.

Instead the Museum specimens will be visible to the general public on our Internet site www.buyresolved.com.au

A work in progress position paper on the derived information products of the Museum was loaded on to our web site on 15 April 2001. This is now superseded.

The Museum is a privately owned organisation and does not have to satisfy everybody’s needs.

Museums are diverse and complex organisations bound together by the common task of collecting, preserving and interpreting our common heritage.

Museums perform five core functions : acquisition, conservation, research, communication and exhibition. They differ widely however, in their collections and in their administrative structures and resourcing arrangements.

We are training our next generation of Museum helpers into our museum culture.

Our Museum blends knowledge, experience, innovation and enthusiasm to achieve the desired results.

The Museum may loan part of its collection for display offsite under safety guidelines we design.

We accept that some persons may disagree with our economic perspective in not commercialising the Museum.

We believe in private funding because :

There are many good semi-popular books on rocks and minerals, mostly published in the United States of America.

A developing interest in the remote regions of Australia that is growing from the unequalled opportunities in this country for getting into the outback away from the stock type of tourist can bring a parallel interest in the fascinating history of mining. So many of Australia’s mining fields are as far removed from the seaboard cities as it is possible to be.

The discovery and development of our greatest mining fields, the Victorian gold fields, Broken Hill, Kalgoorie, and Mount Isa, has materially changed the course of the economic and industrial development in Australia.

A number of excellent popular books on the history of mining in Australia are now available. These deal with mining generally, gold mining in Victoria, and mining in various areas of the west coast of Tasmania, in the Flinders Ranges, at Broken Hill, Mount Isa, and Kalgoorlie.

A logical follow-on from an interest in the history and development of the mining fields would be an interest in the minerals found on such fields and the collecting of such minerals.

Other methods are more unusual, not to say curious.

There is a record of a Bavarian doctor living in a mining district who accepted specimens in lieu of payment for his services.

In Broken Hill, at the turn of the century a publican traded drink to thirsty miners for choice mineral specimens which were then abundant in that famous Australian mining centre.

This collection was subsequently purchased by a philanthropist and distributed among four scientific institutions in Sydney.

Australia is one of the original land masses.

Where we live at Upwey has been submerged under the ocean many times and covered by glaciers during several ice-ages.

The large mountains in Australia have been eroded by time.

We can speculate that Australia is the most geologically interesting land mass that is not under the ocean.

We think there is a new tourist industry about to surface by persons interested in exploring at first hand interesting geological deposits of great antiquity.

Not unnaturally, we envisage our Museum’s prime collection will be from the Australian continent and surrounding islands.

The first version of a conceptual solution for the Museum was produced on 29 October 1999.

Stage 1 plans for the Museum were to generate a 100% increase in specimens held over the year from the opening date.

This has been achieved.

Please make donations of geological specimens, geological testing apparatus, geological text books and cash to help with this project.


References

Chalmers, R.O. Australian Rocks, Minerals and Gemstones 1970, Australia.

Talent, J.A. Minerals, Rocks and Gems A Handbook for Australia, circa 1970